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Would you like to pay a tribute to Anne
or Susan
Send
us your stories and memories.
And photographs, if you have any.
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Horseytalk.net Special Interview
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Anne Wilson & Susan McBane
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Talk to Anne Wilson and Susan McBane about the standard of riding today, the approach, the style and the effect on the horse and, in some cases, it practically reduces them to tears.
They talk of greed, impatience and insensitivity.
They shudder at what they call horrendous gadgets used to
train riding horses.
They speak of bad practices in and out of the competition
arena, and of their pleas to the Federation Equestre Internationale
(FEI), to establish internationally applicable standards
and rules of behaviour.
Whether they are right or wrong or you cannot make up
your mind, you’ve got to listen to what they have to say.
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From an early age horses were the focal point of Anne’s
life. Although a lover of all animals – she
became a vegetarian at the age of five – horses were
very special to her. At four years old, she attempted
to run away from home to live with the baker’s horse!
Neither of her parents were horsey. In fact they were
afraid of horses, but they could never keep Anne away from
them. At the age of seven, her parents gave in, and
allowed her to start riding lessons. Money was not
always plentiful, so Anne wore home made jodhpurs in the
style popular at the time, but would cause a laughing stock
now – see
photo on left, Anne is on the right.
Anne took part in the usual Pony Club gymkhana circuit until
her late teens, when she started to have more serious lessons. Her first awareness of classical riding came from the books of Alois Podhajsky, former Director of the Spanish Riding School. These books inspired her greatly and made her aware of the importance of balance, not only for dressage but especially whilst cross-country jumping.
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She started to teach about 27 years ago, after completing the usual British Horse Society stages exams. Although very much a part of the conventional British equestrian scene, Anne always leaned towards the classical way of teaching and riding and yearned to know more.
She then trained with Sylvia
Loch and experienced the benefits of Sylvia’s wonderful schoolmaster horses, which enabled her to advance the training of her own horses, as well as that of her pupils.
For twelve years Anne was a Regional Liaison Member for the Classical
Riding Club, organising clinics and events and generally educating people towards a gentler way of riding. She
is a holder of the Classical Riding Club’s ‘Gold Award Certificate’.
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and
when there was no horse available..... |
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Although Anne’s approach to horsemanship is essentially classical, she has a very broad base of all the differing disciplines and has taken part in most of them during her career.
Anne is an experienced author, having published articles
for many years in local horse magazines, as well as in the
Classical Riding Club newsletter and Equine Behaviour Forum
magazine. She currently writes every month in the national magazine Equi-Ads.
Her first book ‘Top Horse Training Methods Explored’ was published in April 2004 and has received glowing reviews, being named ‘Book of the Month’ by the British Horse Society.
Her second book ‘Riding Revelations – Classical
Training from the Beginning’ will be published in
August 2009 by Black
Tent Publications and is available from www.black-tent.co.uk
If would you like a signed copy of Anne's
new book -
Contact: annewilsondressage@hotmail.co.uk
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Susan McBane and Anne publish a quarterly, subscription only,
paper copy, magazine called
‘Tracking-up – an
independent view’ |
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Susan McBane is probably Britain’s most prolific equestrian
author - fifty books to date.
She started riding at the age of four at a small, local riding
school which just happened to teach classical techniques
(Saumur/Weedon methods) although neither she nor her parents,
who were not horsey, understood that at the time. When the
owner retired, she spent the years before buying her own
horse (at the age of 20) riding at other yards and on friends’ ponies
and horses. Her
earliest equestrian ambition was to be a bareback rider in
a circus – an ambition she never fulfilled!
Over the years, she has experienced looking after and riding
all types of equine, from children’s ponies to racehorses, but has never been competitive by nature. In the 1980s when publishing EQUI magazine, she received a ‘phone call from Dési Lorent, a French-speaking Belgian teacher of Portuguese classical riding who had trained for many years with the legendary Nuno Oliveira, inviting her to visit his yard to write an article about his methods, which she did.
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She continued to visit and learn from him for two years,
until he left England, and teaches the methods he taught
to her own clients, combining them with modern learning theory
on training animals.
She has been an equestrian writer for many years, holds
an HNC in Equine Science and Management, the Classical Riding
Club Gold Award and is studying for a degree in Equine Science
and has been accepted as an Associate Member of the International
Society for Equitation Science. She is a Shiatsu With Horses Level II practitioner and, in 1978, co-founded the Equine Behaviour Forum with which she is still very involved. She teaches classical riding and schools horses for clients. A firm believer in lifelong learning, she constantly studies the best literature on classical riding.
Her main publishing interest now is in developing ‘Tracking-up’, the new publication she founded with Anne Wilson. It covers humane riding and schooling techniques, equine behaviour and psychology, classical equitation, veterinary and equine science, care and management and much more.
What unites Anne and Susan is not just their love of the horse but their utter conviction that the horse must be looked after, cared for and treated as a horse, not as something to be trained, manipulated and forced to do non-horsey things for the sake of money or prizes.
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